Founder(s) - Dr. Amarjeet Singh, Rahul Bhalla, Vishal Bansal
Vishal Bansal and Rahul Bhalla had settled careers but there was always this burning desire to startup. Both of them shared a common love for data analytics. They considered various growing sectors and finally settled on energy.

They soon roped in their IIT- Delhi batchmate Amarjeet Singh, who was teaching at the Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology, Delhi.

At that point in time, Singh was doing a research in driving energy efficiency and was thinking about commercialising his research work.

Thus, in late 2013, the trio set up Zenatix Solutions, a data-driven energy efficiency startup that uses advanced machine learning based models and saves 10-30% energy for large commercial consumers of electricity.

"Rahul and I were interacting for a long time; we wanted to start something of our own. The common interest was data and data analytics. We knew data analysis is the future. We looked at various verticals — retail, ecommerce, healthcare and energy. Out of these four, energy stood out. It was a vertical that was underserviced and ripe for disruption," said Bansal, cofounder of Zenatix Solutions. "Amarjeet was doing research in driving energy efficiency. He was thinking of commercialising his research work."

Zenatix launched WattMan, an Internet of Things (IoT)-based building management system (BMS), which basically records energy consumption and patterns in outlets, in April, 2016. The WattMan product includes a box-like hardware installed on site, software that goes into the hardware, software that runs on the cloud and an analytics engine.

"Hardware is engineered to reliably operate in the Indian context, which entails large voltage fluctuations, intermittent network connectivity and sudden power failure. Software running on the hardware required research into developing rules and analysis: (for example) the air conditioner that is to be started at 9 am, still starts at the correct time even when the internet connectivity is not there at 9 am," said Bansal.

Zenatix's machine learning models allow for automated controls along with predictive and preventive maintenance of electrical assets, like an air conditioner, thereby resulting in consistent consumer experience in retail and banking sites while also delivering energy savings.

"The longer term value is in data. More than 30 million data points are collected on a daily basis from all the sensors deployed by Zenatix. We monitor temperature that they are maintaining and we analyse the data. They (clients) can predict which AC is not working properly, hence is likely to go down and therefore needs servicing. This is predictive and preventive maintenance. You may lose on revenues where AC does not work — it is a customer satisfaction problem," said Bansal.

The startup, which recently raised a pre-series A round of Rs 8 crore, led by pi Ventures, follows a subscription-based pricing model. "Based on the size of the outlet, we have a standard product and price. We charge a subscription price — monthly or yearly — and the savings is two or three times of what they are paying us," said Bansal.

Zenatix counts Mother Dairy, Domino's Pizza, Fabindia, Vodafone, Airtel and State Bank of India as its clients. "Energy is haphazard in India… (there is) a lot of wastage… people do not know what is happening to their devices. Zenatix has a great product along with a great team. They are able to determine when the machine needs to be serviced. It is not just the efficiency that saves money but it also tells you when you need to call for service. This is the value. It is a global problem," said Manish Singhal, founding partner, pi Ventures.

The startup, which is present in close to 500 outlets, wants to expand to 5,000 in the next 18 months. It also wants to expand into the southeast Asian market.

"There is an opportunity to save more than $150 billion of electricity in the commercial building space globally. Assuming we can charge one-third of the savings, the total addressable market is worth $50 billion in annual revenues. We are currently looking for channel partners who can help us expand into southeast Asian markets," said Bansal.